Hold My Beer — Azure AI Dev Gallery Takes It to Another Level

A little while ago I shared my exploits in creating a very simple local application on my Copilot+ device, using the local NPU and the Phi Silica model. The TLDR: it didn't take very long at all, and I was genuinely impressed at how accessible it was.

Well. Hold my beer.

Microsoft Build just took it to an entirely different level.

Using Azure AI Dev Gallery, I was able to pick a sample — text generation in my case — and have something working in just four steps. That is not a typo. Four steps.

For anyone who has spent meaningful time setting up AI development environments — wrangling Python dependencies, configuring drivers, hunting down the right model weights — the significance of that is difficult to overstate. The friction has essentially been removed.

This is a massive accelerator for developers and technical architects getting started with AI, and one I'll be digging into properly over the coming weeks.

I'm also looking forward to my next experiment with Foundry Local — to see what I can build on device with that. The direction of travel is clear: local AI is getting faster, cheaper and more accessible with every passing month.

Watch this space.

#IBM #Microsoft #Build2025 #AIDevGallery #FoundryLocal